KKR, Cinven Said to Submit Bids for Arle’s Capital Safety
KKR & Co. (KKR) and Cinven Ltd. are planning to submit final bids today for Capital Safety Ltd., the U.K.-based safety harness maker owned by Arle Capital Partners LLP, people familiar with the process said.
The offers may value the company at about 700 million pounds ($1.1 billion), said the people, who declined to be identified because the process is private. EQT Partners AB has also held talks with the British buyout firm Arle over Capital Safety, one person said.
Arle, which spun out from Candover Investments Plc, is seeking to return cash to investors before raising a new pool. It failed to attract bids high enough for Capital Safety from strategic buyers including 3M Co. (MMM), the people said. 3M, based in St. Paul, Minnesota, bid $825 million earlier this year, one of the people said. The company was given an opportunity to rebid, this person said, and came in at the same price.
Anders Pettersson, chief executive of Capital Safety, told bidders he would leave the company once the deal was completed, this person said.
Private equity firms hold $937 billion in unspent capital as economic uncertainty and a tight deal market leads them to delay some investments, according to the research firm Preqin Ltd., based in London. Worldwide, the value of such transactions declined 40 percent to $85 billion in the third quarter, from $142 billion in the previous quarter, Bloomberg data shows. Secondary transactions, when companies are sold by one private equity firm to another, represent 42 percent of the leveraged buyouts in Europe this year, Preqin said.
Arle, led by John Arney, may also sell the manufacturing unit of the U.K. oil company Expro International Group Plc, people with knowledge of the matter said previously. It is also considering selling QiOptiq, a maker of optical equipment for the military.
The firm formerly known as Candover Partners shut its 3 billion-euro ($4 billion) leveraged-buyout fund in 2010 after Candover Investments, its publicly traded parent, ran out of cash and canceled a 1 billion-euro commitment in March 2009. Candover Investments decided not to back any other funds and instead focus on returning cash to shareholders.
Officials for 3M, Cinven, KKR, EQT and Arle declined to comment.
To contact the reporters on this story: Anne-Sylvaine Chassany in Paris at achassany@bloomberg.net; Jeffrey McCracken in New York at jmccracken3@bloomberg.net; Zachary R. Mider in New York at zmider1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jacqueline Simmons at jackiem@bloomberg.net
Rate this Page